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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#161

Post by Dalewyn »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #151
Dalewyn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way: Can you really blame someone for not knowing a historical fact that is completely irrelevant to their life, especially when they probably have more pressing concerns to learn and care about? We only have so many hours in a day and so many days in a lifetime, while knowledge is practically infinite.

You could say that about anything. I limited my initial statement to educated folks, and presumably those who would like to be one. /history/democracy/milestones -> relatively important.

As very broad subjects? Yes. But any particular factoid about them is practically irrelevant for most people who don't actually have anything to do with that factoid.

Hell, I would even go as far as to say the American Revolution is irrelevant even for most Americans because it has nothing of practical value. We (Americans) all know about it to varying degrees, but again that is due to growing up and being indoctrinated in it.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#162

Post by darby_nine »

gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

> Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century".

Yea, but a rhetorical failure. This sounds terrible and far worse than alternatives.

If we want a better system we'll need to either abandon the day or the Gregorian (Julian + drift) caliendar.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#163

Post by darby_nine »

burkaman wrote: post #111
jrockway wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand "1700s art" sounds like trash compared to "18th century art".

I think that's good, because it helps you realize that categorizing art by century is kind of arbitrary and meaningless, and if possible it would be more useful to say something like "neoclassical art from the 1700s". "18th century" isn't an artistic category, but it kind of sounds like it is if you just glance at it. "Art from the 1700s" is clearly just referring to a time period.

> I think that's good, because it helps you realize that categorizing art by century is kind of arbitrary and meaningless

no it won't lol, people will pay just as much through the new dating system as they would through the old.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#164

Post by [deleted] »

runarberg wrote: post #49
gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

In Icelandic the 1-based towards counting is used almost everywhere. People do indeed say: “The first decade of the 19th century” to refer to the 18-aughts, and the 90s is commonly referred to as “The tenth decade”. This is also done to age ranges, people in their 20s (or 21-30 more precisely) are said to be þrítugsaldur (in the thirty age). Even the hour is sometime counted towards (though this is more rare among yo…

[deleted]

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#165

Post by nativeit »

worstspotgain wrote: post #130
rcoveson wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no year zero according to first-order pedants. Second-order pedants know that there is a year zero in both the astronomical year numbering system and in ISO 8601, so whether or not there is a year zero depends on context. It's ultimately up to us to decide how to project our relatively young calendar system way back into the past before it was invented. Year zero makes everything nice. Be like astronomers an…

Yes but, is there such a thing as a zeroth-order pedant, someone not pedantic about year ordinality? As a first-order meta-pedant, this would be my claim. Moreover, I definitely find the ordinality of pedantry more interesting than the pedantry of ordinality.

Thank you for your service.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#166

Post by nurtbo »

The aughts or naughts (or aughties) are a pretty easy to understand way to refer to 2000-2009, though saying “the early aughts” is clearly more verbose than saying 2000-2003 (except that 2000-2003 looks more specific than is meant)

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#167

Post by daynthelife »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #22
milliams wrote: post #11

It's easy, we should have simply started counting centuries from zero. Centuries should be zero-indexed, then everything works. We do the same with people's ages. For the entire initial year of your life you were zero years old. Likewise, from years 0-99, zero centuries had passed so we should call it the zeroth century! At least this is how I justify to my students that zero-indexing makes sense. Everyone's fought t…

> We do the same with people's ages. No, we don't. When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Similarly, you'd say something like 'you're a child in the first decade of your life and slowly start to mature into a young adult by the end of the second decade', referring to 0-9 and 10-19, respectively.

My preference is semi-compatible with both conventions:

First = 0 Second = 1 Toward = 2 Third = 3 …

This way, the semantic meaning of the words “first” (prior to all others) and “second” (prior to all but one) are preserved, but we get sensical indexing as well.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#168

Post by pentagrama »

I got a fight recently with a philosophy teacher about that, I changed the dates like the op to be more clear on my writing, she took it so seriously, it was a big fight about clarity vs. tradition but really superficial and mean on both sides. Now I wish to be* more articulate and have a good debate. I wrote it in my way on the final exam and approved, she had to deal with it I guess.

* Sorry, I don't know how to write that in past, like haber sido in Spanish, my main language.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#170

Post by kelnos »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #22
milliams wrote: post #11

It's easy, we should have simply started counting centuries from zero. Centuries should be zero-indexed, then everything works. We do the same with people's ages. For the entire initial year of your life you were zero years old. Likewise, from years 0-99, zero centuries had passed so we should call it the zeroth century! At least this is how I justify to my students that zero-indexing makes sense. Everyone's fought t…

> We do the same with people's ages. No, we don't. When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Similarly, you'd say something like 'you're a child in the first decade of your life and slowly start to mature into a young adult by the end of the second decade', referring to 0-9 and 10-19, respectively.

> When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1.

Sure, but no one ever uses that phrasing after you turn one. Then it's just "when they were one", "when they were five", whatever.

So sure, maybe we can continue to say "the 1st century", but for dates 100 and later, no more.

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